Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Canada Bear attack video

Dwayne,

Thanks for posting this video and starting the thread. I've been waaaay too busy with real life its ownself for the past 6-8 months to spend much time here on the 'Fire, but it's nice to start catching up with such excellent threads as this one.

I like your shotgun choices. I'd be happy to carry any of those in the Canadian bear woods.

As you may recall, I've posted before that I spent a lot of time backpacking in Alberta's bear country in the 43 years I spent there prior to fleeing the collapse of the Canadian healthcare system. Most of that time was in areas one can't carry or use a firearm, mostly the mountain national and provincial parks. I had dozens of bear encounters in those years, at ranges from 50 yards down to bad-breath distance. None of those was violent in any way, and I'm thankful I had good training/education in bear behavior and avoidance of bear attacks so that they were all benign situations. But I have to say that as the numbers of bears increased in the 80's and 90's, as hunting pressure on bears was scaled back by Alberta's Fish & Wildlife Division, I noticed bears were a lot more willing to get close to humans, and I stopped hiking in the mountain parks and started hiking and fishing on Crown lands where I could go armed.

When I was able to carry a firestick, I carried a Model 12 pump gun loaded with C.I.L. 1-oz. slugs. I did so because that's what I was trained in using back when I was doing bear biology work as an undergraduate at UofC, working with Fish & Wildlife. (This was back before they invented dinosaurs, you understand.) I took the shotgun slug course from F&W back then, and felt (and still feel) that a 12-ga. slug is sufficient bear medicine for anyone. I know a lot of fellers believe in the power of a handgun for bear defense, but having been up close and personal with bruins many times, I have less faith in a handgun than most guys seem to have. That being said, I do carry a sidearm in the bear woods now that I live and hunt in the Lower 48, but it's definitely an item of last resort. But as Phil Shoemaker proved a couple years ago, a fellow who knows how to use it effectively can kill an attacking bear with a 9mm pistol. Not that Phil didn't wish he had something bigger in his hands at the time, as I recall him writing...

Anyways, I carried my old pump shotgun for bear defense. I rigged my Model 12 with a sling like yours, pulled the plug out of the magazine so it would hold 5 rounds of slug, and carried it at all times in bear country. I slung it muzzle down on my left shoulder for rapid deployment in an emergency when on the trail (I learned that trick from a Finn Aagard article, tried it, and found it was much faster than slinging the rifle over my dominant shoulder. I slung it muzzle-up across my chest while flyfishing... this does interfere with one's casting, I admit, but one learns to deal with it.

I did fire a warning shot on what I believe was a predatory black bear, one time. This was in the late 80's in the Swan Hills, which is a country lousy with bears (both black and griz) then and now. I put a slug into the dirt between the bear's front paws at a range of about 30 yards, and it swapped ends and didn't bother me further. That was the one and only time I used it in any manner of bear encounter, but if I hadn't had it to use that day, I expect I'd have been reported missing and my bones might never have been found. Can't say how I knew it at the time, but there was and is no doubt in my mind that that bear was stalking me for its dinner. Anyways, I scared it off with that shot, and was damn glad I had that shotgun in my hands for the long walk back up the trail to the car.

If I still lived up there now, I expect I'd use a rifle rather than slug gun, either a fast lever rifle such as a 45-70 Marlin Guide Gun or a Winchester 1886; or a Savage 99 or Browning BLR chambered in .358 Win, like the M99 I took my 2 black bears last spring with. Or a Remington 760 pump rifle would be a good choice for a man more accustomed to a pump gun than a lever gun. But as your wildlife officer pointed out, the improved penetration of a good rifle bullet will likely work better than any shotgun slug.

Just some random thoughts on this.